A specific keyword, targeted on the home page, lost rankings

[zahirshah]

Hi,

I have a very typical question and I need your help in this regard (I tried to make a few searches over here but couldn't find any relevant thread , sorry if this has been discussed already) .

I have a website xyz.com and I have a section, let suppose “widgets”, we have been targeting the home page for the keyword “widgets” and few more keywords. We have a ton of back links to the home page with that keyword as in anchor, we used to be in the top 3 on that particular keyword (the home page was on the rank).

The thing is now that the inner Page, let suppose xyz.com/widgets.asp, is on the rank, but the rankings are getting down day by day. We have been strongly linking to the home page using "widgets" but still the rankings are slipping down and we seem to be nowhere in the top 10 now.

I am personally thinking that it might be because of targeting lots of keywords on the home page, where Google thinks that our home page isn’t that much relevant to the topic (widgets) as we have more keywords over there, (around 6 more keywords, all of the rest keywords rank at #1 and 2 and doing fine) (other keywords are on a bit different topic, suppose sprockets and blah blah).

Now my question from you guys is that what should we do now? Should we start linking to that inner page (xyz.com/widgets.asp) instead of the home page (which is useless because the home page is no longer on the rank for that particular kwd) if we have to bring that keyword back into the top 3, or what to do now?

Thank you so much for your help!

[edited by: goodroi at 1:54 pm (utc) on Feb 9, 2011]
[edit reason] Please no specific keywords [/edit]

[indyank]

Interesting...but it is always a problem when you get linked to the same page for keywords that are not any way related...

You are saying that you still rank for the rest of the 6 keywords.Are they related in any way?

Do you also have lots of links to the home page with those keywords in the anchor?

[zahirshah]

Yes we have lots of links to the home page with those 6 keywords as in anchor (the home page has got PR 5 in the recent update) ... yes they are related keywords, those are actually the keywords which are somehow exist in the domain name itself, so thats why they are very relevant to the home page, while the other keyword (widgets) isn't that much relevant to the home page (the difference between that 1 and 6 keywords is something like apartments vs Hotels, so the domain itself has apartments in the name and rank great on apartments related keywords and poor on Hotels related keywords)

[indyank]

I think your answer has all the answers...I can somewhat relate this to what the google employee said about links and I can also see why some auto generated content farms are moving up in the last few days, though it contradicts google's publicly stated action plan!

Since when do you notice this?

My suggestion would be to wait and not to do anything now, as the churn is continuing and we never know what the final state at the end of these updates, if any, will be.

[zahirshah]

we disappeared from the top 10 yesterday while the gradual downing started a month ago i think (first we dropped from # 3 to 5, then 6th and gradually to 9 etc).

So shouldn't we start linking to that specific page instead of the home page ? I am thinking to start it, what do you think ?

[indyank]

I guess linking alone will not suffice and you need a lot of related content too...

[zahirshah]

hmm, OK content isn't a big issue for us we will do that also, Thanks!

[Planet13]

We have a ton of back links to the home page with that keyword as in anchor...

How many links is a ton? 50? 100? 1,00? 10,000?

and where are they from? Naturally occurring In-context text links giving unsolicited? Blogrollls? Site wide footers? Forum profiles?